An Exercise In SAT Words… And My Frustration

This week, I was told that the words I use are too big.

(A bit of context for you: I was at work, where I spend my days in business dress, with some fairly educated, intelligent people. I wasn’t talking to a bunch of preschoolers, nor was I speaking to a group of ESL students. )

At the time, I was giving a job interview with a fellow manager and after the applicant left, Fellow Manager and I sat down to talk about our impressions.  Fellow Manager had some notes for me as well.

“Sometimes, Lauren, you use really big words. And it can be… a bit much.”

Ouch. Not the greatest thing to hear about oneself, particularly when I was expecting to talk about hiring. (When did this become about me?) Still, I was bugged but not surprised, as this now marks the third time my vocabulary has been mentioned as a negative in the workplace.  To say nothing of the teasing in elementary school and sotto voce digs that surrounded me in high school English class.

Here’s the thing; I really don’t feel as though my vocabulary is such a stretch. I DON’T use big words. My every day A to Z language choices don’t generally include words like ameliorate or zeitgeist. In fact, the second time my verbiage was mentioned at work, I was hauled into a managers’ office for using the word “equality” in a team meeting. Up until that day, I had never really thought of equality (both the word and the concept) as any particular brain-buster, but you can consider me corrected, Boss.

To be fair, I’m not always wholly aware of the words I am using. Measured speech isn’t exactly my forte. (Is forte a big word? And on that note, do people mean that my words are large or do they mean complex when they say “too big?” To my knowledge, I have never actually used the word antidisestablishmentarianism in a sentence, and that’s the baddest mama-jama of a word there is, outside of medical terminology. But I digress.) I tend to speak quickly and my memory isn’t always the sharpest – so while I can probably give you the gist of what I said, someone would have to take dictation for me to be able to tell you my exact wording. So there’s that.

Still. I like words. I always have. I’ve been a voracious reader since the age of four, a writer for almost as long, and you don’t love books and language like I do without picking up a few things here and there.  Picking up, say, the subtle nuances between the words affect and effect. Or the beauty of a well-turned phrase. The liberation one feels the first time they use a challenging word properly. I just wish everyone knew or wanted to know the joys of language.

Because I’m concerned. Concerned that I am living in a world where people scream their political ideologies from the rooftops, but don’t know how to spell them. A world where, as in the satirical movie, Idiocracy, we’ve devolved to the point where “Uhhhh… you’re retarded” constitutes insightful observation. A world where I am told that my ability to express myself intelligently has become my issue to overcome, rather than someone else’s educational deficiency.

I feel like Chris Tucker in Rush Hour. “DO YOU UNDERSTAND THE WORDS THAT ARE COMING OUT OF MY MOUTH?” And I could do one of two things. I could choose to dum down my talking skillz. Pepper my sentences with “OMG” and enough “likes” to make Facebook proud. Or, I could continue to speak well in the hopes that the grand oral history that has marked the human race as a brilliant feat of evolutionary excellence will someday make a comeback. I choose the latter, thankyouverymuch.

This week I was told that the words I use are too big. But you know what? No. I’m taking a stand because someone has to for all the words that aren’t “a” and “the” out there. You say the words I use are too big? Well, you know what? The words you use are too small. In fact, they’re damned diminutive. Deal with it.

/stepping off soapbox